Does it work? 15: White bean chicken chili

I'm conflicted about chili. On the one hand, its near-infinite varieties, scalability, and freezable nature make it a wonderful thing to cook. On the other hand, I just...don't really like it. I mean, it's fine. I'll eat it. But kidney beans are kind-of meh, I never have beef on hand, and the flavor doesn't excite me. 

Enter white bean chilis. These have a different flavor than traditional chili, chicken as the meat, and no kidney beans - definite wins.

To that end, I vaguely followed Averie Cooks' Easy 30-Minute Homemade White Chicken Chili recipe, with some hearty modifications. 

Why all the mods? I'm currently trying to use up all the random things in our pantry/fridge/freezer/other pantry, as well as reduce food waste (by aggressively putting perishables in anything I can reasonably get away with). But that's the beauty of chilis; they can take pretty much anything. 

Substituted (1 of 16):

- Lemon juice for lime juice (I was low on lime)

Left out (3 of 16):

- Cilantro (would have been good, but I hadn't gone to grocery store yet for the week)
- Green chiles (see previous)

- Some white beans (I just didn't have enough)

Added (2):

- Lentils (I wanted a little bit more beany-ness. Lentils don't have to be soaked and pre-cooked, making them a great last-minute decision.)

- Bok choy (see LPT at end) 

Notes:

- I didn't use any of the garnishes (though I'm sure they would have been nice), nor did I blend part of the bean mixture before adding it. 

- The only thing I'd do differently next time is use less cumin; I think since there were no green chiles, there was nothing to even out the cumin flavor and it ended up overwhelming things.

- I added the bok choy stems with everything else, and then added the leaves at the very end to wilt. 

Did it work? Sure. Mine turned out more like taco soup than anything, but it was still tasty. 

And LPT: Whenever you can put in more leafy greens, do it. 

xo, 

Devo

Does it work? 14: Chicken Yakisoba

This time 'round, we're doing Homemade Chicken Yakisoba by Bydget Bytes. I love Budget Bytes. I did not love this.

Substituted (1 of 14): 
- Made-up concoction for Worcestershire sauce

Left out (1 of 14): 
- Sugar

I was pretty underwhelmed with this recipe. The sauce wasn't great, and just made the noodles and veg kind of...slimy. There were too many veggies, even though I used the amounts called for - the ratio of noodles to veg didn't really balance out.

Now, I did have high hopes for this. I had yakisoba in Japan and have been craving it ever since. Maybe if it had used real W. sauce it would have worked out? And like, halved the amount of veggies. And used different noodles.

So, does it work? Meh. SO liked it well enough.

xo,
Devo

Craft: Magnetic Spice Tins

Something I've wanted to do for a long time, and finally did. Did I spend three days working on it nearly non-stop? Sure did. Will it necessarily take you that long? Probably not.
This is blog post by Love Pomegranate House is what I mostly followed.

The most time-consuming part was sourcing the images and editing them. Partly this was because I wanted to be sure to get public domain images (so I could share them) and partly it was my lack of know-how about image-editing software and my inability to navigate a Mac.

I did my editing using Mac's "Preview"; though I have photoshop on this computer, I have no idea how to use it. If you know more about image manip than I do, editing photos will probably not be so arduous. Also, I sourced a bunch of images for you! Right here at this Google drive link you'll find links to all the images I used, as well as the edits I made.

Also in that Drive folder is a word document, with all the pictures nicely lined up for printing. Note that my containers are aprox. 2.44" square.

Note that all the images in the 72-96 DPI folder will come out slightly blurry. I've so far been unable to find higher DPI images for those particular herbs. But stay tuned! If I manage to source some 300DPI public domain images of say, nutmeg, you'll be the first to know.

This site on Wikimedia commons is a great source for images. It's mainly what I used, so you'll find there more botanical illustrations like the ones on my tins. This botanical.com site is good for looking up spices and images.

I've had these containers on my fridge for several months now, and here are a few things I've learned.

1) The powdery spices tend to gum up the lids (think: powdered ginger, cumin, etc.). I've had to transfer the ginger back into a shaker.

2) If I were doing it over, I'd use tins with screw-on lids. My lids are sometimes hard to pull off without a small explosion of spice.

3) Good for pinching amounts and getting your measuring spoons in; bad for sprinkling over pots.

4) LAMINATE YO' LABELS. I tried hacking it with packaging tape, but it's just not cutting it. Without lamination, all those pretty labels I worked so hard on will get gross and ripped as you cook.

I'm still pleased with how they look and how they allow me to see at a glance what spices we have. However. they're not as functional as I was expecting, which is aggravating. I think with some of the above alterations, they'd be much more cooking-friendly.

xo,
Devo

Book Review: If at Birth You Don't Succeed

I slowed down a bit, but not to fret - I'm still chugging away at my reading goal. 

6/33: If at Birth You Don't Succeed by Zach Anner. 

Two memoirs in a row! I had been intending to alternate fiction and non-fiction, but the fiction book I had was just too dense. 

This was rather better written than the previous, though the story order was slightly disjointed - lots of jumping backward and forward in time. It did make me literally[1] laugh out loud at parts (see: "With Apologies to Gene Shalit"), and moved me at other parts (his experiences with music and family were touching).  

As is often the case, this book could have been about 25% shorter. But take that with a grain of salt; Devo frequently thinks books could stand to be shorter. Or even made into pamphlets. 

If you want to watch, rather than read about, all of Zach's adventures, they're all on the Tube of You.

xo, 
Devo

[1] As Kory Stamper would say, "usage 1" - that is, actually "literally" and not "figuratively."

Book Review: As You Wish

5/33: As You Wish by Cary Elwes. It was alright; mostly I finished it because I, like many people, love The Princess Bride. I learned a few things (that William Goldman is a celebrated screenwriter; that Wesley and Inigo did their own sword fight), and enjoyed reading about how great Andre the Giant was. 

It wasn't well written, despite that "with" helper-author credit. Some of the turns of phrase made me roll my eyes quite dramatically. 

If you like The Princess Bride, give a go; it's not a taxing read. Then go watch the movie again. 

xo, 
Devo

Book Review: Everyone's A Aliebn When Ur A Aliebn Too

4/33: Everyone's A Aliebn When Ur A Aliebn Too by Jomny Sun. It's a graphic novel, which is not something I ever read, but I enjoyed it. It touches on a lot of my interests: dealing with death, linguistics (here's a nifty article about the misspellings), how to feel your feelings. 

These two panels are my favorite, and I'll probably share them whenever someone brings up death anxiety. 

I love this one for its sweetness and subtle inversion of the narrative. Hamlet says, giving voice to a very real anxiety we have about dying and the fear of what might come afterwards, 

Who would fardels bear,To grunt and sweat under a weary life,But that the dread of something after death,The undiscovered country from whose bournNo traveler returns, puzzles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?

But the little aliebn subverts that, saying to the snail, "Maybe the reason they don't come back is because the afterlife is great." [1]

But even the aliebn isn't free from death fear. He's afraid of his friends all dying, and is comforted by the snail. "It's okay," says the snail. "Everything dies. No need to fret."

It's a sweet book. A little bit of existential dread, a little bit of linguistics, a little bit of the Giving Tree. A solid foray into the graphic novel genre for me. 

Currently reading As You Wish by Carey Elwes. 

xo, 
Devo

[1] See also: Season 6 of Buffy, when she returns from the dead...and *spoiler* (though it's over a decade old so you should really get on that) it turns out she was in heaven. 

Book Review: The Housekeeper and the Professor

Y'all, I am killing it. 3/33: The Housekeeper and The Professor by Yoko Ogawa. This short, sweet book was quiet and lovely. I enjoyed learning about math and baseball (not things I know much about). I loved reading about kind people just being, well, kind to each other. A good meditation on memory and what it takes to form good relationships. Recommend.

***

I feel like a kid again, getting whole armloads of books from the library and actually reading them. Well, more or less. I had to give up on Rise of the Rocket Girls - while the subject matter was quite interesting (women in the space program! woo!), it had too much of that names-dates-places stew that I don't like. I'm not really one for biographies or historical novels, and this felt like that; too many random events, not enough narrative. That's personal preference, of course; if you want to learn about rockets and women and math, give it a go.

**

What should I read in my 1k Quest? Leave me a comment with your recommendation and I'll give it a shot. (No promises I'll finish it.)

xo,
Devo